Therefore,
what are the characteristics of Fascism that Americans should watch out
for now and in the very near future? The eight characteristics that Americans
should become aware of are as follows:

The
first characteristic of Fascism is to identify the enemy of the state
and to rally around the leaders of the nation to defeat the enemy. The
major enemies could be racial, ethnic or religious minorities, liberals,
communists, socialists, or terrorists.

The
second characteristic of Fascism is to spend more money on the military
than on domestic spending. Also, the military is depicted as worthwhile
and glorified occupation.

The
third characteristic of Fascism is to control the mass media either directly
or through government legislation. Censorship is used regularly, especially
during war time.

The
fourth characteristic of Fascism is to use fear over national security
to control the masses.

The
fifth characteristic of Fascism is the protection of corporate power.
Since the money people and the power elite are responsible for electing
many of the leaders of a nation, business and government leaders work
hand in hand.

The
sixth characteristic of Fascism is to have an obsession with crime and
punishment. Law enforcement agencies are given too much power. As a result,
people are willing to overlook police brutality and to give up many of
their personal freedoms for the sake of patriotism.

The
seventh characteristic of Fascism is to appoint groups of friends to control
the government.
This often leads to corruption as these friends protect each other as
they manipulate the government.

The
eighth characteristic of Fascism is to manipulate elections. Leaders of
fascist regimes attempt to have their candidates win illegally.[2]

Of course,
as is obvious, many or possibly all the characteristics of Fascism do
exist in the United States in the 21st century. Therefore, what fascist
characteristics does America have today? They are as follows:

First,
since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States has
been fighting terrorism, the enemy of the state, on many fronts. Initially,
Osama bin Laden was hunted until he was killed last year. Then, many of
Osama bin Laden’s henchmen were killed to by the gallant efforts
of American military personnel. Now, based on recent congressional legislation,
America’s military may go anyway in the world and arrest any suspected
terrorists and incarcerate them for unsubstantiated terrorist actions.
This includes American citizens, too. Of course, America’s Founding
Fathers would never have passed such fascist legislation, since it encroaches
on the freedoms that millions of Americans have died to defend.

Second,
in order to fight terrorism around the world, more money is spent on the
defense budget than the domestic budget. The two wars fought in Afghanistan
and Iraq cost America taxpayers billions on top of billions of dollars.
As a result,

America’s
national debt has risen to over 15 trillion and rapidly rising. Also,
since America has had to concentrate more on defense spending, non-defense
industries have suffered terribly. Growth is stagnant and unemployment
is around 9 percent now. Of course, credit card debt is astronomical,
since many people have lost their jobs and, as a result, have had to use
their credit cards to live on in recessive times.

Third,
much of the news that is broadcasted to the American people is not always
true. It is distorted for propaganda purposes. As a result, Christians
and conservatives have been targeted to take the blame for terrorism and
all the ills of the American society. In fact, these groups have been
targeted because they cry out against abortion and homosexuality, which
are two ills of society that are promoted and supported by the federal
government. Basically, a fascist government controls the media and manipulates
it for their agenda of controlling the masses.

Of course,
if a distorted and biased view of the news is religiously promoted on
the airwaves; most people would eventually accept it. As Joseph Goebbels,
Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933
to 1945, stated, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating
it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained
only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political,
economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for
the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth
is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Therefore,
could this be the main reason that the current federal government abhors
any individual or any organization that voices opposition to its agenda
of destruction for America.

Fourth,
since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there are many examples
of the federal government using the fear factor to motivate the masses
to follow its agenda and to encourage the government to raise the debt
ceiling. The major tactic used is to threaten to cut services, such as
police and fire protection, schools, roads, and Social Security. Some
other major cuts, according to Karl Dickey of the West Palm Beach Libertarian
Examiner, are as follows:

Rather
than raise the retirement age for government employees from 54 to 67 –
the same age you retire with Social Security -- they threaten to raise
the retirement age for Social Security recipients from 67 to 70.

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Rather
than cancel wasteful and unnecessary government contracts for their Special
Interest pals, they threaten to close national parks and ruin the family
vacations of thousands of Americans.
Rather than cut the budget of the destructive Federal Drug Administration
(FDA), they raise the price of life-saving drugs for patients who have
grown dependent on government.[3]

Therefore,
it is obvious that America’s politicians will use any tactic to
get Americans to give them their money to spend as the politicians see
fit. This is definitely a “miscarriage of ethics” on the part
of America’s elected representatives whose job is to create better
living conditions and standards for the electorate instead of themselves.

Fifth,
as can be seen in some of the activities on Wall Street, corporate power
has been protected in recent years. According to Matt Taibbi in a Rolling
Stone Magazine article concerning the recent destruction of the economy
by Wall Street corporations,

This
is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every
major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal
scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds
of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth —
and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant
and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other
rich and famous people. The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a
single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on
the phony financial boom — an industry wide scam that involved the
mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities —
has ever been convicted. Instead, federal regulators and prosecutors have
let the banks and finance companies that tried to burn the world economy
to the ground get off with carefully orchestrated settlements —
whitewash jobs that involve the firms paying pathetically small fines
without even being required to admit wrongdoing. To add insult to injury,
the people who actually committed the crimes almost never pay the fines
themselves; banks caught defrauding their shareholders often use shareholder
money to foot the tab of justice. [4]

Apparently,
the United States government is in bed with America’s corporate
giants. As is known, billions of taxpayers’ dollars was used to
bail out these crooked corporate entities. But, no money was used to bailout
the “average Joe” on the street who is unemployed and is unable
to pay for his portion of the “American Dream.” Therefore,
since the government is determined to raise the debt ceiling so that it
can spend, spend, and spend, then the government should bail out the rest
of the hardworking, patriotic Americans, too. Of course, since politicians
get thousands of dollars for their political campaigns from the very corporations
that they supposedly regulate, it is highly unlikely that they would protect
the general public at the expense of losing lucrative campaign finances
from major corporations.

Sixth,
as a result of the Patriot Act, people have been willing to lose some
of their personal freedoms for the sake of helping apprehend possible
terrorists. However, why should Americans have to give up any freedom
for the sake of patriotism? In fact, was the Patriot Act just a political
ploy used to convince the American populace to freely give up their freedoms
without even protesting. Also, was the Patriot Act just a contrived move
to give more power to the federal government, just like George Orwell
depicted in his book 1984? Of course, as in 1984, America has been in
a continual war for many years. This, in itself, would make people willing
to give up some freedoms, also, in order to defeat the enemy of the state.
But, when the enemy of the state is terrorism, which can come from within
and without, it is extremely difficult to actually defeat this evading
enemy. Therefore, the federal government has an ongoing opportunity to
take more and more freedoms away from those who put their unwavering trust
in the federal government.

Seventh,
politicians have been appointing their friends to lucrative government
jobs for decades in the American political system. This permits politicians
the opportunity to pay their friends back for helping them get elected
to office. It also permits politicians to appoint people to office that
have the same political ideologies that they have. As a result, if a politician
secretly promotes a fascist ideology in America, his friends would work
diligently to help him or her achieve his or her secret agenda, an agenda
to turn America into a fascist nation controlled internally by the federal
government. Unfortunately, in the last decade, there have been signs that
un-American activities have been promoted by politicians and the friends
who work for them that have a fascist mindset.
This is the reason that Americans have demanded that corrupt politicians
who have moved too far to the left of the political spectrum should be
dismissed. However, there are still many more politicians and their friends
who need to be dismissed from their federal government positions, since
it is known that their political ideology centers on Marxism and Fascism.

Ultimately,
since Big Government is synonymous to Fascism in many respects, the current
administration has many fascist tendencies. In fact, Republican presidential
candidate Newt Gingrich painted a viable picture of Fascism in America
in his rebuttal of President Obama’s State of the Union Address.
He said,

For
the president and a large part of the political class, it’s about
their power, their right to rule. They just want to take money from Joe
the Plumber – the small business people who makes over 90 per cent
of the new jobs -- and redistribute it to the government bureaucracy and
their political friends and allies. That’s why so much of that nearly
trillion-dollar stimulus didn’t create jobs but just went into the
pockets of special interests who support President Obama and the leadership
of the Democratic Party.

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Obviously,
it cannot get much clearer than what Newt Gingrich said. The current Executive
Branch is concerned about all its cronies and not about the suffering
American people. According to former Speaker of the House Gingrich, it
is the current administration’s goal to turn America into government-dependent
fascist nation. In fact, he expressed it clearly when he said,
But bigger government and higher taxes will not lead to jobs and growth.
Bigger government and higher taxes will instead lead to more people on
food stamps, a situation which the President and his party defend as a
fair outcome.

Here
we have to confront the truth about President Obama. Economic growth and
prosperity is not really at the top of his agenda. He will always prefer
a food stamp economy to a paycheck economy and call it fair.[5]

Therefore,
based on what Mr. Gingrich stated about President Obama, he described
the essence of Fascism, an “I must depend on the government for
everything” mentality.

Carl
Parnell retired from public school teaching in 1999. He taught history
and other social science courses for over forty years. He taught middle
school, high school, and college level. Carl was a Lead Teacher and Principal
of the On-Campus School at Georgia Baptist Children’s Home in central
Georgia. Presently, he's teaching at a private, Christian high school.

Carl served in
the United States Army from 1968-1971. He also served in the United States
Air Force Reserves from 1983-1986, was chosen Teacher of the Year in 1991.
Carl was included in the 1993, 1994 and 2007 editions of Who’s Who
Among America’s Teachers. He was selected Star Teacher at hes present
school in 2007 and published his first book, "From
Schoolhouse to Courthouse: Exposing America’s New Terror from Within"
(ISBN: 1-58736-613-4) in July 2006.

Carl has completed
his second book, which is in an eBook format, entitled "A Brewing
Pot of Christian Persecution: America's Postmodern Anti-Christian Crusade."
My eBook, as well as over 60 of my articles, can be viewed at FaithWriters.
Com

Rather
than raise the retirement age for government employees from 54 to 67 –
the same age you retire with Social Security -- they threaten to raise
the retirement age for Social Security recipients from 67 to 70.